History of Newspapers by Tyreun Holmes

Colonial News

00080587 — 2025-10-06 01:18:07 UTC

Often referred to as the beginning of newspapers, colonial newspapers started up during the late 1690s and early 1700s. During this era, newspapers were very limited in the amount of information they carried. Additionally, these news sheets, as named during this time period, were only printed out once a week. A prime example of a colonial newspaper is the above copy of "Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic" released in Boston in 1690. While "Publick Occurrences" is widely considered to be the first newspaper, this newspaper—along with other originals such as the Virginia Gazette and The Boston News-Letter—had one goal in mind: to inform readers about what was going on.

Source: https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/spring03/journalism.cfm#:~:text=Most%20colonial%20newspapers%20were%20weeklies,such%20advertisements%20and%20news%20as:

Penny Press

00080587 — 2025-10-06 01:40:59 UTC

Following the colonial news era, the era of the penny press started up in the early 1830s with the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Penny press newspapers got their start with Benjamin Henry Day and the creation of his newspaper, the New York Sun (both pictured above). He created this newspaper after realizing how privatized the industry was at the time. To combat that, Day decided to sell his newspapers for a penny—thus the era's name—and had them focus on advertising and topics that appealed to the poorer, working-class society. This newspaper, along with its many copycats such as the New York Herald, produced by James Gordon Bennett, created an era of American journalism that allowed for a fair, democratic, and even distribution of information.

Source: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/birth-penny-press

Yellow Journalism

00080587 — 2025-10-06 02:12:11 UTC

Shortly following the penny press era, the era of yellow journalism lasted throughout the 1890s, ending at the very beginning of the 1900s. Yellow journalism derived itself from trying to make a competition out of using sensationalism—or the act of using stories to tug at people's heartstrings—to sell newspapers. The main culprits of this type of journalism were rivals Joseph Pulitzer's The New York World and William Randolph Hearst's The New York Journal. What started as a simple competition came to a head with Cuba's report of the sinking of the U.S. battleship the Maine. Instead of the truth, both journals spread lies about what had occurred and incorrectly placed the blame on Spain, partially causing the start of the Spanish-American War shortly afterward.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/crucible/journalism.html

Modern Journalism

00080587 — 2025-10-06 02:50:25 UTC

Lastly, modern journalism encapsulates the transition that newspapers have made from print to digital over the past 150 or so years. This transition occurred as a result of the following five prominent improvements for newspapers—and journalism at large: the telegraph, radio, television, internet, and social media. Each one increased the amount of information and objectivity that newspapers can have. Social media, the latest of these developments, has made it so that it's no longer necessary to have a newspaper as long as a journalist shares the same information in oral or video format. On top of this, these developments have allowed consumers to hold newspapers and journalists accountable when there's a lack of objectivity in the information they share.

Source: https://philrosenn.medium.com/journalism-has-been-changed-forever-this-is-how-and-why-1d71c1fb959f